Clinical Journal 1 Essay

Submitted By brohman1991
Words: 1075
Pages: 5

Observing in classes outside of my Cooperating Teacher’s (CT) classroom was a great experience that allowed me to gain a perspective of different methods to approach my own classroom. The first classroom I observed as a sophomore chemistry class. The classroom itself was broken into two parts. The front part was the traditional classroom that contained a demonstration table and teacher’s desk near the front of the room. There were also tables and chairs for students to sit in. The back part of the classroom was the laboratory for that class. This area contained lab tables, chairs, power outlets, and gas hook ups. The walls were covered with various scientific posters including the periodic table and examples of different types of rocks. The most limiting part of the classroom was the fact that the tables the students sat in were arranged in a very odd manner. There were some students that were sitting in tables that were facing towards the front of the room, but others were facing the center of the room. This prevented every student to be fully engaged and caused classroom management issues for the teacher. The posters were used as reference materials for the class as they went through the lesson, and the lab was not utilized the day I observed. Overall, the teacher did the best he could with the limited amount of space, but it was not necessarily the best environment for learning. The next class that I observed was a freshman level Biology class. I looked at this classroom through the lens of classroom management because the class was solely freshmen. One example of poor classroom management that I witnessed in this class was the enforcement of working on a study guide. The class was given some time to complete a study guide, and the teacher allowed students to listen to music while they worked on it. This lead to students listening to music, created a distraction for some students as well as students getting away from the task at hand. It was eventually corrected by the teacher walking around to keep students on task. A positive use of classroom management came in the review of the study guide. The teacher took the time to go through each question on the study guide to ensure that students had the correct answers and clear up any discrepancies. This was done by asking for responses from students that volunteered to answer. Many students across the whole room actually did answer questions. These two instances provided a contrast to exactly how the classroom could be viewed. The third classroom I observed was an AP U.S. History class which I noted the lesson plan that was used in the class. This class was one of the smaller classes I observed with a more relaxed atmosphere. The class was very interesting, but the plan for the class was very loose at best. The class started ten minutes late, the objectives were not clearly stated or defined, and the class did not flow well from point to point. The class started by discussing a reading the students were supposed to complete and the implications of the reading. A future reading was assigned, and then the class spent the remaining time watching short videos that were relevant to the course. There were no formative or summative assessments present in this lesson. As each part did not flow well from one point to another, it was very disjointed. While basic elements of a lesson plan were there, the flow and assessment portion was simply not there. Next, I observed a basic accounting class and examined it through the lens of instructional techniques of the teacher. This class heavily utilized online resources in addition to in class materials to teach the class about accounting. The result was a lot of time in class to work on the materials found online. Accounting is a content area that requires a lot of teacher centered instruction with practice on the part of the student, which is what I observed in this classroom as well. In my own content area of English Language Arts, it